LOVE IN DISTRESS

Untitled Episode2.TWO WORLDS

Sterling Heights University was not the same in the day as it was at night when we cleaned.

Being a student and a cleaner was hard to balance, but a scholarship isn’t enough on its own. It takes hard work and seriousness, and I was ready to give it all of that.

From the first week I kept quiet. I didn’t talk to anyone, just went to class and sat in the back. I wrote notes and listened to the lecturer, and I answered when he asked me a question.

My answers were short, but at least I was learning something. I left fast after class because I didn’t want people asking me questions, and I kept my head down because I didn’t want to be seen.

My clothes were old. I had three shirts and wore them again and again, and my one pair of jeans was clean but worn. The other students wore new clothes every day with nice shoes and new phones, while I had an old phone with a cracked screen that I kept hidden in my bag.

My mother and I still cleaned at night because the scholarship paid for school but not for food or rent or the bus. We needed money, so we kept our night job. We left our small home at 6 p.m. and went to the school with our old cart, and we cleaned from 7 p.m. to midnight before heading home. I slept for a few hours then got up for class, and I was tired every day but didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want them to know.

On Thursday I met the first person who would change my time at this school.

My mother and I were cleaning the Science Wing. This part of the school was new with white walls and glass doors, and it smelled like fresh paint. My mother was in the bathroom cleaning the sinks while I mopped the hall floor, even though it was already clean because mopping every night was the rule.

I heard steps behind me. They were slow and not my mother’s, so I turned around thinking it was a student who came back for a book or phone.

It was Michael Drake.

I’d seen him before in my Math 101 class, sitting two rows up. He was 21, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and he wore an old gray sweater with a hole near the sleeve and faded jeans. His shoes were worn down at the heels, and I’d seen his beat up sedan with a dent in the door parked in the student lot.

He saw me and stopped. His eyes looked at my face, then at the mop in my hand, then back at my face.

“You’re the scholarship girl,” he said, but his voice was quiet and he didn’t say it to be mean.

I stood up straight. “I’m Annabelle,” I said, because I wanted him to use my name. I wasn’t just “the scholarship girl.”

He came closer, one step and then another, and now he was near me. He smelled like coffee and paper, like he’d spent all day in the library.

“You clean here at night and go to class here in the day,” he said, looking around the hall. “That must be hard. I get it. I work at the campus print shop after class to pay for my books because my dad doesn’t help me.”

I held my mop tight because my hands were wet. “You don’t need to think about me,” I said. “I don’t know you.”

He gave a small smile that actually reached his eyes. “I know, sorry. I just recognized you from class. You’re really good at math, you answered that problem yesterday when the rest of us were lost.”

I didn’t say anything and just waited.

“Scholarships don’t cover everything,” he said gently, like he wasn’t trying to pity me. “People think they do, but they don’t cover food or rent. If you ever need notes or someone to study with, I’m around. No catch, I mean it.”

My heart was beating hard. “I did not ask for help,” I said, and my voice wasn’t strong.

“I know,” he said. “I’m not offering help like that. I’m just saying I understand. It’s lonely when you’re the only one working two jobs.” He stepped back then, and he didn’t touch me or act like I was part of the floor. He looked at me like I was just another student before turning the corner and disappearing.

I couldn’t breathe for a minute. Then my mother came out of the bathroom with a bucket, saw my white face, and hurried over.

“What is wrong?” she asked, setting the bucket down.

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said, even though it was a lie because I didn’t want to scare her. She was sick last week and needed this job, and I needed this school.

I put the mop in the water and kept cleaning, but my hands were shaking. I thought about what Michael said, about how he worked too and understood. He didn’t look at me like I was dirty or less than him.

That night I couldn’t sleep. Our home was small with two rooms. My mother slept in one and I slept on the couch in the other, and I could hear her breathing because she was asleep.

I looked at the c***k in the ceiling and thought about the day. For my whole life no one saw me. I was the girl in the back of the class and the girl with the mop, and I was no one and I was safe when I was no one.

Now, after one week at Sterling Heights, someone had seen me. Michael Drake saw me and didn’t look away, and he talked to me like I was normal.

One day had changed my life, the day my mother gave the money back, because that day made me a student and put my face in the news.

But now it felt like every day after would decide if I could keep this new life, with every choice I made and every person I talked to. I closed my eyes because I had class at 9 a.m. and had to clean at 7 p.m., and I had to be two people again tomorrow.

I didn’t know if I could do it, but I knew I had to try because a scholarship isn’t enough. It takes hard work and seriousness, and I was ready to give all of that.